Patient-Centered Oncology Care Model Improves Quality Measures

During a presentation at the PCMH Congress 2017, Kashyap Patel, MD, an oncologist at Carolina Blood and Cancer Care; Patricia Barrett, MHSA, vice president of product design and support at the NCQA; and Manasi Tirodkar, PhD, MS, a research scientist at the NCQA, presented data on NCQA’s Oncology Medical Home Recognition program.

Ms Barrett and colleagues highlighted how the patient-centered specialty practice recognition model can be used to impact care for oncology patients and discussed the development of the Oncology Medical Home Recognition program.

Ms Barrett explained that because oncologists play a unique role in specialty care, compared to other medical specialist, a model unique to the challenges of oncology was required.

“The oncologist does play a slightly different role than many other specialists,” she said. “The predominant care that they might be providing is more consultative, and less longitudinal. Oncology really does embrace the patient and needs to become that root point of contact in a way that is very different from a regular medical home.”

The oncology medical home model consists of quality measures for oncology practices, practice responsibilities, comprehensive health assessments, implementation of evidence-based pathways, and coordination of patient financial and community support.

“We are really increasing the emphasis on evidence-based pathways, making sure that not only diagnosis and treatment are being addressed through these evidence-based pathways but also symptom management,” Ms Barret explained.

Data indicate that the oncology medical home model improves quality measures related to symptom assessment and care planning by emphasizing these two areas. They determined that the model had less impact on improving patient experiences, but did improve on shared decision-making. 

“Findings are consistent with evaluations of PCMH that show time and financial incentives are needed to drive improvement in outcomes,” Dr Tirodkar concluded.

—David Costill